Kundalini Yoga Advice and Journal

April 2012

Last week I had a number of crises. For one thing I have in one way or another been occupied with moving for three months. That is, packing up one house that I owned but had left, to be ready for the sale early March. Then separating out things to be kept and those to go that had belonged to a relative. Then packing up items where I was actually living to move to another house that, having been empty for three years needed some work beforehand.

Then during the last few weeks a close relative was suddenly in pain and I almost went back from France to my homeland England, in order to be with them. Everything seemed to be going up in the air, relationship, job and work, home, even country.

As if, once teetering on the ridge of a mountain the wind started blowing wildly in all directions. So much anxiety to be getting it done but without that edge that adrenalin and anxiety can give you to rush forward. Then as if living a metaphorical existence I saw some diesel oil on the road, lost all control of the car which bounced to and fro into a rock face before coming to a halt in the middle of the road.

I am okay and I so wondered about the merits of my ability to be detached, was being able to keep going even when exhausted actually dangerous? This I thought was not really yoga practice. I had wanted to cancel everything that week and stay home to move why hadn't I? Was being able to get out of the car and deal with everything calmly, only weeping later on, the result of all that morning yoga? Or was thinking I should stay at home a squashed instinct? Would less pandemonium have avoided the accident?

I hated rules yet I had been rigidly carrying on getting up doing yoga however tired, however little sleep. Was I being a yoga fake? Was I just managing to manage lots of difficult situations because of yoga rather than solving them? Was I really pushing myself and therefore possibly others too much? More anxiety! Of course I did not think it had happened just by chance.

Driving at less than 60kmh for ever now will suit me fine. I don't know that I want a car that can do more than that speed. Why should I have to have one? Of course I was and still am very grateful to be uninjured. It put everything into perspective humbling.

So me I like to have lists and goals and keep going until I have finished. It was challenging me. I was low on belief in people and in my commitment. It seemed a coincidence that just after thinking I should stop everything and carried on I hit an oil slick that destroyed my car and could have caused me serious injury. It seemed a coincidence that I had no control over the car when I also was tired and life did not seem altogether under control. No judgement is a yoga principle. When you experience it yourself it usually makes you kinder to others I find.

Yet it is almost as if through that fragility and hopelessness, fear of mortality, that mess, something now is connecting to life coming into the yoga, an energy returning. This I hope is what is meant by Shiv Sharan's Singh's quote; 'If you love your friend wish them a crisis'. That is from difficulty can we develop, a strange paradox.

That same week the bigger kundalini establishment arrived at my yoga lesson door. A woman training with the kundalini school in Paris arrived. After three years of practising virtually without any contact I could feel that through her presence. That too seemed a coincidence that just when I was in doubt along came reinforcements.

Yogi Bhajan said in typical mysterious way, To be or not to be, that was the Piscean age, to be to be is the Aquarian. Easier said than done.

Sadly I will be away for just over a week in London. While I am away the yoga on Monday (Week 17) 23rd April will be taken by Julie. The Tuesday 24th and Thursday 26th classes will be taken by Brigitte.

There won't be any yoga classes over the weekend 30th April and 1st May. Then I am back again on 6th May. I hope that you enjoy trying the yoga with Julie and Brigitte.

Brigitte Amat is French and lives in the Haute Vienne and is going to be able to come to yoga classes in Villefranche from time to time. She first tried kundalini yoga with Yogi Bhajan in Mexico in 1980. She has been practising on her own until last year when she began the kundalini yoga teacher training in Paris.

I look forward to seeing you when I get back and I will be on email throughout the time away so please contact me when you need to.

In the UK there was a book by George Monbiot a long time ago, in 2000. 'Captive State' explained the private funding initiatives, that is, in one example, selling hospitals in city centres to be converted by private businesses and borrowing money to build replacements outside the town centre, tying up NHS funding with rent dues for the next seemingly endless amount of years and making patients travel further.

Well now, it seems that a close elderly relative of mine has a problem with her leg and cannot walk. She had to get a taxi to the Doctor and the hospital.

Either she gets herself to the Doctor or calls an ambulance, which costs £500, it seems. What would happen if she could not pay for a taxi and was alone without a friend to drive her?

What to do? Her Doctor had actually suggested she go to A & E for an x-ray to try to find out the cause of the problem because apparently the old x-ray centre has been sold for development and the nearest new x-ray unit is on the outside of the city perhaps 16 miles away instead of 2.

Recently I received an email from a young Doctor who works in a major A & E unit about the difficulty in meeting their waiting targets. He said that everyone is responsible especially mentioning weekend binge drinking. A hospital bed is £280 he said.

Of course yoga is a form or preventative care, to bring in a healthy body and mind that takes a lot of effort.

But wouldn't it be worth having a minibus for people who need help getting to the Doctor? When does a welfare state stop being one, what is the definition? What services have to be unavailable before it is offically finished?